Here near the Tolhuis is the southern entrance to the North Holland Canal, with its great lock gates—a channel which simplifies the boat voyage between Amsterdam and The Helder, penetrating almost the entire length of the province of North Holland, a distance of forty-five miles or more, and dividing into two the island already made by the North Sea Canal. A hundred and thirty feet in width and sixteen feet in depth, it was constructed a half century before its North Sea predecessor at a cost of about $4,000,000, and its water level at Buiksloot, the first little station on the tram line, about a mile from the Tolhuis, is as much as ten feet below that of the sea at half tide.
Broek, a little farther along near the tram line, is reputed to be the cleanest town in the world, and I have not the least doubt that its reputation is well deserved. But its motive is ill chosen: it is clean for a purpose. By its cleanliness it attracts visitors, and so it can scarcely be reckoned as a criterion by which to judge the other towns of Holland. No doubt it was clean long before it ever had any visitors, but since the tourists commenced to hear about its hypertrophied spotlessness, they began to visit it; now the more visitors it has the cleaner it becomes. Like a duck, it is preening itself continuously from dawn till dark.
From Monnikendam you may take steamer direct for the Island of Marken, but it will be more to your comfort to join the steamer in Marken and return through the canals to Amsterdam by way of Monnikendam. Such a procedure, however, is dependent upon the steamer captain’s consent to the proposition; for the boats that ply this route carry excursionists exclusively, so that even if the captain can be induced to accept you as a passenger you may have to pay the full fare for the trip from Amsterdam to Marken and return.
Once—about three and a half centuries ago—Monnikendam was included in the list of the most important towns in Holland. In its halcyon days its money chests contained enough bullion to provide for the outfitting of a fleet which it sent under spreading canvas up the coast to Hoorn, to demonstrate to the skeptics that a Spanish admiral could be captured in battle, if only the scheme were handled in the proper manner. Long since has Monnikendam been relegated to the so-called “dead city” class. It is almost too sleepy to keep awake in the daytime, arousing but once a year from its perennial slumber: when Amsterdam comes on skates to hold an ice carnival.
Back somewhere in the fourteenth century, when the only maritime means of access to Amsterdam was down the Zuyder Zee, Edam held the strategical position of being its picket port. Since those good old days its 25,000 population has depreciated four-fifths in numbers. Were it not for its brand of cheese, flourishing before the gastronomic world a perpetual advertisement of the place, Edam would soon find itself mentioned in the same breath with Broek and Monnikendam. It has a fourteenth century Gothic Groote Kerk, tremendous in comparison with its population, and a Town Hall in which are preserved the portraits of four or five erstwhile citizens of Edam, the respective virtues of whom its present inhabitants still like to mention as if they bore some weight upon the town’s past prosperity.
One of these local celebrities was a man of the name of Osterlen, who, in the 1680’s, could boast about a merchant fleet of his own numbering ninety-two sail. Three of the others were Trijntje, Peter, and Jan. Trijntje (the diminutive in this case must have been merely a matter of irony) was said to have been nine feet in height and of proportionate width; Peter grew an ambiguous beard the dimensions of which required it to be tied into a knot in order to save it from being stepped on by its master; and Jan, an immigrant from Friesland who later procured papers of naturalization in Edam—a “ringer” we should have called him in small town baseball parlance—Jan’s net tonnage was four hundred and fifty-four pounds on the date when he launched himself into the forty-second year of his life.
At Edam you will scramble into a little sailboat to be propelled by the breeze down the canal for a mile or more to Volendam. Each side of the ditch—it isn’t much more, if judged by its width; neither is its odor any sweeter—is bordered by low-lying fields populated with the black and white bovines directly responsible for the principal industry of that section. They look docile enough at a distance, these cows of North Holland, and they probably are at close range, when it comes to showing the proper deference due an unmolesting human being, but they are notorious for their biased aversion to dogs. The dog seems to be their time-honored and ancient enemy, and the mere presence of one in the field can cause a deal of agitation. If its owner accompanies the dog he may be expected to commence a Dutch Marathon almost any minute, because, at sight of him, the cow will foreclose with the canine and open speedy negotiations with the owner. I have been told that it is unsafe even to walk along the canal bank with a dog, for only during last summer one staid old burgher of Volendam, in so doing, was hooked to death, and two ladies of Edam, while taking an evening walk, had to be hustled into a passing sailboat and pushed out from shore to escape a similar fate.
Every ten feet or so, it seems, someone will be fishing, for fishing, more than any other, appears to be the national sport of Holland. No self-respecting fish would live in some of the canals they fish in, but certain species must be able to survive their density else the proverbial Dutch patience would be soon exhausted.
The most odoriferous point along the canal from Edam to Volendam is in the immediate vicinity of a duck farm just near the journey’s end. These ducks are the amphibious flies in the amber of what is otherwise transparently picturesque. They are farmed throughout Holland, but only for their eggs, which, being too strong even for the Dutchman to relish, are sent to the more cosmopolitan cities or exported into the foreign pastry kitchens.